Benjamin Nugent

Good Kids: a Novel Benjamin Nugent Reprint edition

The critically acclaimed author of American Nerd makes his fiction debut with this romantic tragicomedy about a teenage boy and girl who discover his dad is having an affair with her mom. For readers of Chad Harbach and Jennifer Egan, and fans of filmmakers like Noah Baumbach. At fifteen, Josh Paquette and Khadijah Silverglate-Dunn catch Josh's father and Khadijah's mother kissing in a natural foods store. They make a pact never to cheat on anyone, ever. They have no problem keeping the vow--until they meet again at twenty-eight, both struggling with career and identity, and both engaged to other people. Part inter-ethnic romance, part intergenerational conflict, Good Kids is a hilarious, sad, handsomely plotted story of love and class in the era of the redefined household. Stylistically adventurous but always accessible, Nugent trains a keen ear on the vernaculars of Generation Y and the baby boomers, as young and middle-aged alike try to decide what parenting, background, and loyalty mean in late twentieth and early twenty-first century America.